


Seeing Your Soul

by silverlysilence



Series: Your, My, Our Souls [1]
Category: His Dark Materials (dæmons), The Avengers (2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 04:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlysilence/pseuds/silverlysilence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony was always a little different when growing up.  Most everyone knew he was different than an average child. He was born into fame, fortune, and Rain. Or, more exact, Rain was born into fame and fortune with Tony, as his dæmon.  Not that Rain ever complained about their life.  What she did complain about was the fact that only Tony could see dæmons, other humans just didn't seem to be seeing a person's soul. </p>
<p>Elements of HDM, but not an out right crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rainy Day

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first attempt at the Avengers, which was done for the Avengers Kink meme.

Rain was the first memory Anthony E. Stark could recall, which was saying something since the boy genius could remember a lot.  It just so happened, that this was Anthony Stark’s oldest memory, which was to say, it was slightly hazy in the finer details, such as the what day of the week it was or even what month the memory took place.  He was not even able to remember the whole day clearly.  What he could recall though, was one vivid fragment that he could never forget, not even if he tried. 

 

Of what he could remember of the day itself, Anthony recalled that the day was overcast and somewhat muggy with the promise of rain to come.   However, there had not been any downpour, yet, just a few drops of water here and there throughout the day.  Most people had been in a hurry to get gone before the downpour finally came and come it did.  The clouds suddenly opened up and rain poured down with no other warning than a slight shift in the temperature, which sent people running for cover.  Granted, it had the opposite effect on the three year old Anthony Stark.  Instead of trying to find refuge inside, the child slipped outside of his father’s nice dry office and into the heavy rain.

 

The water droplets immediately started to soak into the ten thousand dollar Armani suit his mother had forced him to wear that morning and as he jumped from forming puddle to forming puddle, the grim and muck was doubtlessly ruining the suit with each splash.  Not that Anthony care, he was bored out of his mind sitting in the too white lobby and, more than likely, his parents wouldn’t care either.  They barely glanced his way unless they were parading him about in front of the cameras as they had been just a few hours ago.  Once they were finished showing him off, he was set aside like one of his father’s finished projects until it would come in use later.  However, after hours of people watching and doodling schematics on scrapped pieces of paper, Anthony could not sit still any longer.

 

So, he made his own fun, calculating the best vectors, angles, and thrust ratios to jump into the various puddles in order to maximize the splash.  Not to mention he had to test his hypotheses to prove if he had been correct or not.  After all, it was all in the name of science, so he really wasn’t doing anything wrong.  Or at least, that was what he was going to tell Jarvis when he got home and the man gave him one of his infamous looks of exasperation at his ruined suit.  The three year old was too enthralled in his calculations and ideas of how to pacify Jarvis over the ruined Armani suit that he never noticed where his jumping into the next largest puddles had led him.

 

Right in to the middle of the street and directly in front of incoming traffic. 

 

Anthony only noticed where he was when the loud blaring of a horn startled him into looking up into the oncoming lights of what looked to be a Jeep from his angle.  Or it could have been an old military vehicle he had seen in the old movie reels of his father’s about The Captain.  Either way, Anthony’s mind, which had been running over the last set of mathematical equations to form the biggest splash yet, went from processing a quarter of a mile of information a minute to  instantly going into safe mode causing his mind to go blank.

 

To this day, he knew he would have been killed.  Even at his young age, Anthony knew what death was in the scientific sense and not the eternal sleep nonsense many parents tried to feed their children when they’re too young to really understand.  He would later admit to a seemingly empty room he had been terrified of death.  He did not want to die. 

 

The only reason he had survived had been because of the large, soft body that collided with him.  The impact had sent him out of the way of the incoming car and hurtling back on to the sidewalk.  Anthony was gently deposited back in front of his father’s office and finally given the chance to view his savior fully and not just the blackish-brown color of fur he had been pressed securely up against a nanosecond ago.

 

He first noticed the ethereal blue eyes which captivated Anthony with their color.  The eyes almost seemed like they were emitting light on a wavelength similar to that of a B2II star, a bright giant blue star according to his current astronomy textbook.  Only after the child drank his fill of the blue-white eyes did he notice that his savior was a bear.  A North American black bear if his memory served him correctly.  A bear which then shifted into a plan brown hummingbird and proceeded to flitter all around him, nudging Anthony with its long beck looking for any signs of injury.  All the while, _talking_ , chastising him for not paying attention to his surroundings.

 

It was only when a particular large raindrop landed on the hummingbird’s head; throwing off the tiny bird’s balance and flight that Anthony finally made a move other than blinking owlishly at the odd creature.  His little hands reacted on their own accorded and caught the tumbling bird in his cupped hands.  Bringing the huffing and shaken up tiny creature to his face, the three year old studied it as it had been studying him a few seconds earlier to make sure there were no injuries on the hummingbird.

 

“Rain, are you okay?” Anthony asked the tiny creature.  The rest of the memory blurred out in Anthony’s mind.  He could not recall Rain’s reply yet he vaguely remembered the secretary finally realized her boss’s son was outside playing in the rain and dragging him back inside.  Anthony also recalled when he had gotten back to the Stark Mansion, Jarvis giving him that look of exasperation that he knew he was going to get for his ruined clothing, but he couldn’t remember what his parents had to say or even if they were present. 

Either way, the rest of the memory from that day really didn’t matter to Anthony Stark and he didn’t care that he lost all the other detail of that day, because what he remembered was what was really important to him.  He remembered the day he named his dæmon, his Rain, and that was all that mattered.  It was a memory he would never forget as long as he lived.

 


	2. Study of Dæmonology

It wasn’t until Anthony E. Stark, now Tony as Rain insisted on calling him, was four did he come to realize that only he could see dæmons.  He could not even remember what he had been saying to his mother at the time, he was just too happy to have her listening to him for once – or at least half listening – that he was just rambling away.  His mother had been responding with hums and awes in all the right place, up until the point where he had brought up Rain in the conversation.  It was then that she truly looked at him and not through him like she had been since the beginning of the conversation, even her cheetah dæmon sitting next to her grooming itself and ignoring Rain’s kitten paws batting at his tail finally looked up at him. 

 

His mother’s question was simple.  She just asked him who Rain was, but it was the first words she had spoken since the one-sided conversation had started and it was a sign she had heard some of what he was saying that made Anthony thrilled.  Her voice was even and didn’t hold any emotions, yet the cheetah’s curious stare and flickering of his ears reflected all the reactions she wouldn’t show.

 

“Rain’s my dæmon of course,” Tony had told his mother proudly, thinking that she didn’t realize that Rain was the name of his dæmon.  After all, he didn’t know the name of his mother’s cheetah or his father’s gorilla, they never spoke to their dæmon in front of him and he was too afraid of being rude or breaking another one of the numerous unspoken taboo to ask and receive one of his parents’   _looks_ in reply.  But his mother didn’t seem to get that Rain was his dæmon; in fact, she just thought it was his imagination and seemed to be indulging him when he tried to explain that dæmons were not “pets” before shooing him away when one of the young male servants came in with the excuse that the mail had arrived.

 

It was during his failed explanation to his mother that he realized he really didn’t know much about dæmons in general.  He had taken their existence for granted and since everyone seemed to have them, Tony had just accepted the status quo about them.  However, as soon as he realized his mother could not see her dæmon or anyone’s dæmon for that matter, he began to question himself on what he really knew of dæmons.  Turned out, he really didn’t know much other than everyone had one, they were called dæmons, and his dæmon was Rain.  He couldn’t even recall how he knew they were known as _dæmons_ in the first place, he just _knew_ that was what they were called.

 

Tony was determined to change that, he was going to learn all there was to know about his Rain and dæmons in general. Like any good scientist would do, Tony began gathering data through various types of methods.  The one he used the most was to simple watch, which gave him a lot of decent observational data.  Through this method, he learned that adults’ dæmons no longer had the ability to change forms.  There was no shifting to different forms like Rain was constantly exploiting her ability.  She loved to transform her form to match his moods or even if she felt like being something else at that very second in time. 

 

Other children’s dæmons seemed to be able to shift their shapes almost as much as Rain did.  Although, the dæmons’ form seemed to stick to a certain set of shapes that they switched between, this seemed rather odd to the little scientist.  Yet, what Tony found the most fascinating was that the younger the child was, the more often their dæmon would change their shape and the larger range of animals were in their set of shifts, but the closer the child was to adulthood, the less often their dæmon would change and the variety of animals they shift into would decrease until they wouldn’t change at all.

 

Truth be told, Tony didn’t know if he wanted to grow up if that meant Rain lost the ability to change her form as often as she liked.  He knew his dæmon love her transmutation ability to be whatever she wanted whenever she wanted and it would be his fault if she couldn’t change (although, he had yet to figure out the reason for this loss of said ability).  However, Rain scolded him for that particular voiced out thought and told him not to worry about it until the time came.  He tried to argue with her, but in the end, they left the discussion closed and went back to observing their unknowing participants of their Dæmonology Study. 

 

The next part of their Dæmonology Study came in the form of formal interviews, which weren’t so formal since the only person who would conduct the interview with him was Jarvis.  Unlike the other servants in the Stark Mansion, he took Tony’s study seriously and didn’t brush him off like he was a little kid trying to play some sort of scientist game.  It was one of the reasons Tony and Rain adored the man and his lioness dæmon so much.  Jarvis even believed him about there being dæmons everywhere and was very fascinated by his Dæmonology Study.  The man went as far as giving him a blank leather book to record all his study down in one place.  Tony loved the book.

 

With Jarvis’s help, the man let him bounce ideas off of him and directed him towards areas he never thought off.  One such area he had helped Tony and Rain in was the theory about why people’s animals settle.  Jarvis’s insight lead them to theorized that not only did dæmons settled into an animal representation of a person’s inner self, dæmons usually took on the characteristics and stereotypes of the animal they settled as just as their human counter parts associated that particular animal with. 

 

The best real world example he could find was that of one of the maids, who Tony tricked into answering some of his questions about how she defined blackbirds.  She had used terms to label them as evil, thieves, and bad omens.  Something Tony found odd, since her dæmon was a rather large blackbird; turned out, she had been a thief herself after being caught stealing one of his mother’s broaches.  On the other hand, one of his father’s top engineers who had stayed for dinner one evening also had a blackbird for a dæmon and had indulged Tony in his questioning.  The man had told him a story his grandfather had told him as a young child of how some of the Native Americans tribes believed that blackbirds were the bearer of wisdom and insight.  A story which had influenced him to the point that he believed the same thing to this day and whenever he say a blackbird, he swore inspiration for his engineering projects would strike him instantly.

 

After that real-life experience, Tony learned not to judge a person’s dæmon based on their physical appearance, because he might just interpret the symbolism behind the animal as wrong to that particular person and their culture.  In one culture, a particular animal could symbolize corruption and evil, but in another culture, it could be seen as rebirth and all things holy.  At any rate, his father’s closest friend Mr. Stane had a snake for his dæmon and even though Rain didn’t like the snake didn’t mean that Mr. Stane was evil.  Mr. Stane was his father’s closest friend after all; he couldn’t be evil, even if Tony got the hibby-gibbies just looking at Black Mamba.

 

Tony’s next discovery about dæmons wasn’t actually a planned part of his study and it anything he would ever like to repeat again if he could help it.  He had been down in his father’s workshop, building a circuit board to show his father that he did too understand what him and Mr. Stane had been discussing before he had been shooed away.  The concept was not very hard to understand, it was just a glorified highway for electrical compounds to communicate with each other, which could be built with any scrap materials his father keep down in his lab.

 

“Rain, could you get me the small screwdriver over there,” the four year old asked his dæmon, currently in the form of a kola bear, pointing to the desk across the way.  He was just putting his finishing touches on the board and wanted it to be perfect to show to his father, Tony knew his father didn’t take second rate work from no one and he wasn’t going to give him second rate work.

 

What Tony hadn’t been expecting was his father to stumble down the stairs, a bottle of amber liquid in his left hand and his gorilla dæmon tense and more wild looking than any gorillas at the wildlife preservation that Jarvis had taken him to for his fourth birthday ever looked.  His father also appeared to be miserable, a look which quickly morphed into a sneer when he spotted Tony and the mess he made in the middle of his workshop surround by his valuable tools.

 

Not that the little boy noticed, no Tony lite up at the sight of his father and turned his attention to his circuit board to proudly show off his creation.  He did not even get the chance to touch his circuit board let alone show his proud creation to his father before the bottle of amber liquid shattered close to his tiny fingers and the roaring of his father’s dæmon echoed throughout the lab.  His body reacted instantly, recoiling back from the loud sounds as pieces of glass pierced his skin delicate skin. 

 

Before he knew it, Tony was being lifted up and shaken by the collar of his shirt as his father scream obscenities at him.  He barely felt himself being roughly carried up the stairs and shoved into some servant’s waiting arm’s as his father directed the man to take Tony to his room.  What the boy did notice was Rain’s ethereal blue eyes as she scrambled up the stairs, changing her shape from the kola bear to some type of dog before his father slammed his lab door close and the ever present pneumonic hiss as the doors sealed shut.

 

“NOOOO,” Tony hollered as the servant carried him further away his dæmon, his Rain, trapped behind the door to his father’s lab.  He struggled relentlessly with the servant, but couldn’t detach himself from the large man, even when he dislodged the vulture dæmon from the man’s shoulder after trying to twist out of the strong grasp.  His screaming becoming louder and more hysterical the further away the servant got from the lab.  Not that the man cared, the servant just believed that the Stark child was acting like a spoiled brat.

 

What the man didn’t know, was that with each step taken away from the lab, the more Tony felt like he was being shredded.  The feeling wasn’t like anything he could imagine and he couldn’t find the right words to describe it accurately.  His body was being pulled away from a part of itself, ripping him in half at the same time as becoming hyper aware of the growing distant between him and his dæmon.  It felt like he was being cut away from the most important part of himself and it _hurt_. 

 

The servant dropped Tony not so gently onto the floor of his room and turned to leave, only for the child to try and squeeze his way past him and out the door.  With a screech, the servant seized the boy by his tiny arm and jerked him back into the room before quickly leaving through the door.  Not wanting the spoiled brat to leave the room and have him being blamed for disobeying his employor’s instructions, the servant locked the boy in his room and left that particular wing of the manor.  He ignored the bloody screams of the child he left behind, as the boy pounding on the door like there was something inside the room which was going to kill him. 

 

The Stark child was just acting like a spoiled brat because his daddy didn’t want to spend time with him was the main thought running through the servant’s mind.  Never knowing he was a part of the mental and physiological torture of a four year old child.  Instead, he headed back towards the library wing of the mansion, where Mrs. Stark had requested his services earlier in the day.

 

No one else came by Tony’s wing of the manor that evening.  Jarvis was out for the day and the rest of the servants tended to steer clear of the Stark child, as he seemed to talk to himself and they all thought he wasn’t quite right in the head.  His parents only came by their child’s room only when it suited their needs, which wasn’t very often.  So, no one was around to hear the cries and the screams of a tortured child as he banged against the sealed door.  Neither was there anyone around to hear the screams to diminish to rasps and the banging to become mere thumps before it became unnatural silent in the middle of the night.


	3. Jarvis's Contribution

It wasn’t until the next day, when Jarvis came to wake up his charge that anyone found the comatose body of Tony Stark slumped up against his door, his breath ragged and nearly nonexistent with dried blood running down from his nose and his fingers all but mutilated from trying to claw his way out of the locked room.  Doctors were summoned to the manor, since any attempt to take the boy from the residence sent his body into convulsions which only stopped once he was back in the mansion.  Yet they were not help.

 

All the doctors could find was that Tony’s body was progressively shutting down, slowly dying and none of them could explain why he was little by little dying.  As each doctor strived to be the first to diagnose and cure the heir to Stark Industries, they didn’t notice that neither of the boy’s parents were present to impress with their talents.  For it was for the recognition of curing the Stark Heir they were trying to achieve and not helping the four year old child that desperately needed their expertise. 

 

Jarvis was there though.  He was not going to leave his young charge’s side if he could help it.  He was the one to take notice of the red lines around the boy’s neck and the hand shaped bruise on his arm that the doctors were clearly avoiding, none of them wanting to be the first to state their matching thoughts in fear of the power the Starks’ held.  Jarvis didn’t blame them though, he wouldn’t say anything either.  The boy needed someone in the house he could count on, someone to run to and hide behind when needed and Jarvis was that someone.  That was, if Tony lived.  If he didn’t, the veteran had enough evidence to ruin the Stark family and their ever picture perfect image.

 

All the while Jarvis was intensely scrutinizing the doctors’ every move, a part of him keep nagging at him that he needed to find _something_ , something that was missing, yet he didn’t know _what_ was missing.  The man had conflicting urges to stay by Tony’s side while also to find whatever was missing.  The longer he watched Tony struggle for his next breath, the compulsion to search for whatever was missing grew until he could no longer ignore the distressed feeling and he was never one to go against his instincts.  They had served him well in the past, during the war, and he wasn’t able to doubt them now.

 

With one last look at Tony, Jarvis nodded to one of the older maids as an indication for her to keep a watch on the doctors.  She gave a sharp nod back and he slipped out of the room without any of the doctors noticing his disappearance.  The man let his feet take him, leading the way by an invisible pull.  Jarvis had no real idea where he was going, stopping every now and again to open a door or to look down intersecting corridors only for something to pull him away from the doorway or down a certain hallway.

 

The walk from the parlor to the obscured entryway to Howard Stark’s lab after various stops was a relatively short brisk walk all things considering, taking only fifteen minutes.  Yet, the amount of time it took to get there felt like to an eternity to him.  Jarvis came to an abrupt stop at the air tight, titanium reinforced triple locked door which was disguised as an everyday linen closet.  Unless someone knew how to access the secret room and they were to open the door, they would find that it really was a conventional linin closet.  However, that was not what was stopping the butler from entering the lab.

 

What had Jarvis standing in front of the linen closet was the thought of who was inside the lab.  Howard had locked himself up in the lab last night according to one of the maid and hadn’t even come out when the same maid had used the intercom to inform Howard that his son was dying.  Jarvis had no urge to talk to the man that showed no sign of caring about his dying son. Yet, at the same time he felt like he _had_ to go into the lab.

 

Tapping a few choice spots on the door frame, the pneumonic hissing noise of the door unlocking perpetrated the room a moment after his finger pressed the last of the hidden keys.  Jarvis stiffened his back, until it was ramrod straight, and made to take the first step down the long staircase and into the darkness.  He never did take that first step, as what could only be labeled as something brushing up against his left leg held him still. 

 

It almost felt like something was crouching down right up against his leg.  The feeling was odd but not uncomfortable; almost like the feeling of an old friend standing by his side which conjured up a fleeting thought of Tony’s Dæmonology Study.   Whatever it was, the compulsion to go to the lab dissolved to be replaced by a more urgent need to get back to Tony. 

 

All other thoughts were shaken from his mind and Jarvis, instead of heading into the lab, grabbed a few towels from the actual part of the linen closet before making his way back to the parlor.  The hiss of Howard’s lab closing was a faint noise in the background as Jarvis’s long strides took him further away from the dark and forbidding feeling emitting from behind him.  By the time that the butler got back to the parlor, all the doctors had congregated to the corner of the room furthest away from their patient.  Whispers and half-baked diagnostics were being thrown out and vetoed, yet Jarvis could tell that none of them really knew what was going on. 

 

“Missus Walters, would you be so kind and escort these gentlemen out,” Jarvis directed the elder maid, who nodded her head and followed his orders without any question. 

 

As the grey haired woman began to usher the doctors out, each of them tried to defend their position and give reasons why they needed to stay, but Mrs. Walters took none of their nonsense.  Jarvis ignored the squabbling men and instead seated himself on the edge of couch, grabbing the awaiting bowl of lukewarm water from the end table and dropped the cloth he was holding inside.  With care, Jarvis wrung the excess water out of the cloth, began mobbing up the sweat coating Tony’s agony filled face.

 

“It’s alright Master Anthony,” the man softly crooned, dabbing the child’s face clean.  Jarvis sat there for hours, wiping his charge’s face clean and cooing soft words of encouragement as he watched as the agony gradually crept off of his face and the color steadily return.  Mrs. Walters would come in periodically with a new bowl of lukewarm water and towel and exchange the used cooled water and dirty cloth for new ones.

 

It was after Mrs. Walters’s fifth visit that Jarvis finally got a reprieve when dark chocolate eyes fluttered open.

 

“Rain…Rain… Jarvis…Rain…here,” the child mumbled disjointedly, not really making any sense.  Yet, just hearing Tony’s voice was just a joy that Jarvis could only smile and discard the towel and bowl onto the end table.

 

“Yes Master Anthony, it’s raining,” Jarvis confirmed, glancing only for a second over to the wide window where the steady pounding of rain beat up against the glass before turning his eyes back onto the sleepy chocolate brown eyes hazed over in sleep.  “But, sir, it’s best if you were to go to sleep now.”

 

“Okay,” Tony murmured, his eyes already closing and only a second later his breathing had evened out.


	4. Of Dæmons & Dust

Many things had been added into Tony Stark’s The Study of Dæmonology book since Jarvis had handed him the empty leather-bound journal.  Some of the findings were small and irrelevant, yet fascinating enough to the mind of one Anthony E. Stark that they were recorded within the book, filling up the pages with ink and little sketches.  Others, such as the focused separation of Rain and Tony from each other, had also been recorded out of pure scientific necessity; yet, those entries always seemed to be written with a shaken hand.  However, there was one facet of the Dæmonology Study which Tony could never add into his book, not wanting to record such a devastating phenomenon.

 

Dust.

 

Tony was twenty-two when he remembers coming into contact with Dust for the first time.  That wasn’t to say it was his first time coming in contact with Dust, it was just the first time he knew without a matter of doubt that he had come into contact with the phenomenon.  After all, Dust was everywhere and nowhere.  Although confusing, that was the best way to describe Dust, Dust just was.

 

When he first realized there was something more to the world, and specifically dæmons, was while holding the hand of Jarvis when the man released his last breath.  Tony’s only confidant and safe haven as a child, who believed him no matter what and looked out for him all his life, had finally succumbing to the cancer which the older man had battling with for the last three years.  Tony watched as the scrawny and weaken hand from the countless sessions of chemotherapy finally went lax and the heart monitor flat lined. 

 

He did not need to hear the heart monitor’s blaring alarms to know when it was the end of Edwin Jarvis.  All Tony had to do was look at the haggard and scruffy lioness which lay curled at the end of the hospital bed.  Goldwyn, the proud and proper lioness, looked nothing like she had before his mentor was diagnosed with cancer and it pained Tony to see the lioness wilted away and disappeared into a furry of glistening particle the moment Jarvis passed away.  It was beautiful, yet heart wrenching to watch at the same time and Tony couldn’t help but reach out to touch the dissipating particles.  The only reason he never touched the Dust was because of Rain’s hissing and shifting form from a Mourning Dove to a black cat to violently pounce on his hand and avert him from touching the glistening particles.

 

It was a feeling, even though Tony never actually touched the Dust, which couldn’t be soon forgotten.  The best way to describe the feeling was like touching an oxymoron.  It felt so wrong and yet it felt so right in the same instance.  The closer he came to touching the Dust, the more the trepidation climbed inside of him and the more he wanted to touch the glittering particles.  Particles which were calling to him, while telling him at the same time he wasn’t ready; not yet.  He just needed to reach a little further and he could touch the Dust, it was only Tony’s slight hesitation that gave Rain enough time to attack his hand to keeping him from touching the stuff.

 

Afterwards, after the doctors had tried to comfort Tony by telling him that Jarvis had gone in peace, after Mr. Stane had lead him away a promised to make arrangements from Jarvis’s funeral, Rain had laid into him.  Yelling, hissing, howling, squawking, barking, all as his dæmon shifted shapes, berating him for even trying to touch the Dust. 

 

“What’s the big deal?” Tony asked the agitated dæmon, her ever present, never changing, ethereal blue eyes staring intensely at him from her position in his lap as he typed away at the computer, creating codes and building parameters for his newest creativity binge idea.  “It was just some kind of powder.”

 

“No, Tony, it wasn’t just some _powder_ ,” Rain hissed at him, kneading her claws into his leg.  “It’s Dust.”

 

“Dust?  What’s that?”  The question was asked automatically, as Tony continued to type away at the terminal, his mind running three different ideas for the code while simultaneously trying to push the grief at Jarvis’s and Goldwyn’s death out of his mind and holding a conversation with Rain.

 

“I…” Rain started, but then trailed off, which earned her a curious, if not slightly worried glance from Tony before was back to staring at the computer screen.  “I don’t know.  Dust just _is_.”

 

An acknowledging hum was Rain’s only response, showing her that Tony was still listening. The small dæmon sighed and let herself shift into a ferret to crawl underneath Tony’s AC/DC shirt and up his body to poke her head out of the collar.

 

“Other dæmons are saturated in Dust,” Rain tried to explain, curling closer to Tony’s neck.  “Goldwyn didn’t turn to Dust; that was just the Dust which had settled upon her over the years.”  The little dæmons gave her human a tentative lick, more to reassure herself than anything else before continuing her explanation softly.  “The only dæmons we’ve ever met not touched by dust are children’s dæmons.”

 

Her words made the clattering clicks on the keyboard come to a halt and Tony’s hand come up to his shoulder to cradle her small body while gently detaching her claws from his shirt.  Pulling her away, the man held his dæmon up so that hazel brown eyes met ethereal blue eyes.

 

“Rain, are you telling me that Dust is what makes dæmons settle?”

 

“Yes….  Probably…. I don’t know,” the little dæmon admitted, shifting forms again at the uncomfortable thought of never being able to do just that.  The two never could full understand why Rain had never settled on any one shape when they reached maturity in their teens, but they had thought it had something to do with Tony’s ability to see dæmons when no one else could.  But maybe, just maybe it was because these particulars, the Dust, had not settled on Rain and, thus, to an extension on Tony himself as well.  Why was a mystery to Rain and now, to Tony as well.

 

A weak mewl came from the tiny kitten as Tony pull her close to his body and just hugged her.  He held her tight enough to his body, almost as if he was trying to merger their bodies together into one.

 

“Rain, I promise you, I won’t mess with Dust, I won’t,” Tony whispered into the trembling midnight blue fur.  “Promise.”

 

And Tony kept that promise for as long as he could.  The two came into other situations where they would have come into contact with Dust, but Tony had stayed as far from it as possible.  Instead, he worked on his newest creation, JARVIS, a home computer system which would be integrated into a whole house that subtle, over time it gradually turned into an artificial intelligence.  All the while, he worked on multiple weapon projects for Stark Industries and fired more person assistance than any other CEO before him.

 

It wasn’t until Virginia Potts and Cinnamomum walked into their lives that things had changed.  Pepper and Cinnamon, as they had taken to calling the pair when it became apparently they were going to stick around, seemed to fit into their lives as if they were missing pieces.  Pepper was always prim and proper, not a single hair out of place and constantly forcing him to get things done on time.  It was no wonder that Cinnamon was a Lipizzaner Stallion, an animal of strength and power yet they were known for their prestige and refined grace.  They were beautiful if anyone was to ask Tony or Rain, but not many people ask his opinion on such things.

 

Together, Pepper and Cinnamon filled the hole left behind by Jarvis and Goldwyn.  Pepper, just like Jarvis, could see beyond the façade which was Tony Stark the Child Prodigy, Howard Stark’s Son, and the CEO of Stark Industries to just see Tony; a man who had no concept of time and just needed someone to stand by his side and someone to flat out yell him when he’d gone too far with something.  Although, no matter how much Pepper and Cinnamon keep Tony and Rain inline and on track, they could have never keep them from the Ten Rings and Obadiah Stane’s clutches. 

 

Stane had too much of a hold on Tony after Jarvis’s death for Pepper to keep him falling into the man’s clutches.  In Tony’s eyes the man went from being just Mr. Stane, his father’s former business partner and fill-in-CEO of Stark Industries, to being Obie, the man who was looking after him and became his pseudo-father.  Obie could do no wrong.  However, Tony should have just stuck with his first impression of Mr. Stane, someone not to be trusted, instead of letting him become Obie.  Hell, if he couldn’t trust his own judgment, he should have trusted Rain’s.

 

Rain hated Stane’s Black Mamba and the snake would never talk to Tony.  While that wasn’t saying much, because there were a lot of dæmons who wouldn’t talk to Tony when they wondered a little ways from their human counterparts and he would try to engage them in conversation.  So he didn’t take it personally when the Black Mamba wouldn’t talk to him, that didn’t excuse him from not listening to Rain.  Rain was a good judge of character and she had been right not to trust Tiberius Stone with his little weasel of a dæmon.

 

Either way, be it through Stane or the Ten Rings, Tony unintentionally broke his promise to Rain and came in contact with Dust.  Three months living in caves, three months of being tortured by terrorist, three months of reevaluation his live and it only took one moment for the knowledge to encase him, for the Dust to settle, for Rain to settle.  All it took was the death of Ho Yinsen and his Ashia, the adder snake, for everything to change.   

 


	5. Avengers are Home, Avengers are Pack

Anthony E. Stark had been called many things in his life, good and bad.  He had been called more bad names than good though.  However, Tony had been trying to make up for being the Merchant of Death ever since Afghanistan, ever since Yinsen and Ashia’s deaths, ever since Rain settled.  He had done so much to try to make up for his ignorance.  Yet, the general public still blamed him for main mistakes, his mistakes and others’ mistakes.  A lot of those mistakes were Obadiah’s dirty dealings that he was blamed for and if he was truthful with himself, Tony still blamed himself as well.

 

But Tony _tried_ so hard to make amends.  To wipe his ledger clear of all the red.

 

_He_ put a stop to Stark Industries weapon manufacturing and turned to green, _clean_ , energy.  _He_ had taken out the Jericho Missiles and terrorist, cleaning up after his ignorance of Stane’s double dealings. _He_ had taken out Iron Monger.  However, all that just earned him a blip on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar, but that didn’t deterrent him, it just made him all that more determined to do _more_.

 

Especially after he found out; _he_ was already dead.

 

The palladium poisoning from his arc reactor which was keeping him alive was slowly killing him.  But he stopped caring about his life along time ago by then and continued to try and atone for his sins.  It was only by a miracle he kept his terminal condition a secret for so long.  Tony was just glad for once he was the only one who could see dæmons or else everyone would have seen that there was something terribly wrong with him in a matter of seconds with one glance at Rain.

 

However, he kept trying to clear the red out of his ledger.  

 

_He_ restarted the Stark Expo.  _He_ finished the designs for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Helicarrier.  _He_ gave Pepper and Cinnamon the position they deserved as CEO of Stark Industries.  _He_ manipulated Rhodey and his eagle Kitaria into taking War Machine (because the man would be too suspicious if he out right gave it to him and he might have suspected that something was wrong with Tony if Tony even tried to just give him one of his armors).  _He_ took out Hammer and Whiplash.

 

And he survived.  Tony and Rain invented, well re- _invented_ , the element vibranium.  He started a relationship, a _real_ relationship, with Pepper.  Things were okay for once.  He wouldn’t say perfect, but they weren’t disastrous.

 

However, it wasn’t until the Avengers happened that the last piece, the last missing pieces of his life, at long last fell into place.  There had been bumps along the way.  Like the internal fighting and the almost dying (again) part from flying a nuke through a wormhole and into space had been bad.  Then there was all really bad experience, which included the break up with Pepper thrown into the mix of numerous villains popping up out of the woodworks to try and take over the world.  In any case, Tony and Pepper decided they were better off as friends and he was just glad they had remained friends than lovers.  However, there was a lot of good to go with the bad and looking out from the doorway of the kitchen and into the living room, Tony could clearly see all the good.

 

Natasha sat poised on the brown leather couch, calmly disassembling and cleaning her guns meticulously before putting them back together.  Unknown to the Black Widow, her dæmon was curled up next to her, purring away contently.  Lenka was the one tell the Natasha could never control and only Tony could take advantage of the Russian Blue cat giving away the superspy’s true emotions.  Not that he would ever use that knowledge against her; something he would have done after she had posed as his PA for S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

Natalie Rushman had lost Tony Stark’s trust in Natasha Romanov.  However, Lenka had gained back that trust for his human counterpart when the grey dæmon with green eyes had pounced upon his slightly smaller dæmon and the two degraded into a playful brawl between his legs.  That was when he realized that the coffee the superspy had given him was her way of apologizing to him.  It was also when he discovered that unlike his human, Lenka was all about showing his emotions and wasn’t afraid to act on impulses of brawling with Rain or just holding his dæmon down and licking her clean during breakfast.

 

Not far from the superspy, Coulson sat in his armchair doing the countless pages of paperwork S.H.I.E.L.D. pushed off onto him, switching between hardcopies and his StarkTablet compiling a report of some sort.  Perched on the back of the armchair, with her head under her snowy white wing, Sage the Snowy Owl slept soundly, unlike how she meticulous surveyed her surrounding all day while on duty.  But here, here Coulson and Sage the Snowy Owl could just be Phil and Sage, the overworked government agent who loved his job more than anything else.  Not to mention, where the Avengers could keep an eye on him since they hadn’t been able to during Loki’s attack and believed him a casualty of war.

 

In the aftermath of the invasion, the Avengers were ecstatic to see Coulson was alive and more than pissed off at Fury for lying to them.  While the others had been taking turns to visit the injure agent one at a time, Tony had elected (after being the first one to bust into the room before quietly retreating) to go last and pulled out his phone while going to work.  By the time it was his turn, he had the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical release forums filled out with all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed to bring the agent back to the his slightly beat up tower along with a new set of vintage Captain America cards ready to be signed. 

 

Ever since coming back with them the first night, Coulson hadn’t really left, not that anyone cared.  Besides, Rain would kill him if he kicked out Sage.  Rain could (and would) spend hours listening to Sage tell stories about anything and everything while curled up in Tony’s lap.  Truthfully, Tony liked listening to the stories too while Coulson and him filled out paperwork for S.H.I.E.L.D. and Stark Industries respectively in his office (which had become their office) at the Avenger Tower.  

 

On the bookcase situated behind Coulson’s armchair, Clint sat on the top shelf, cheering on Robin Hood during his archery contest scene in his movie pick of the week, _Men in Tights_.  The overly loud and rambunctious behavior of the archer was constantly startling Gwendolen, his Peregrine Falcon dæmon, off her perch from beside him.  After the tenth time of flying off her perch and circling the room before landing in the same place as before, Gwen finally gave up on sitting beside her human counterpart and instead perched next to Sage.

 

The snowy owl jerked awake at the new presence and when she saw it was only the falcon, Sage let the other dæmon scuttle closer to her and leaned into Gwen before falling back asleep, which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.  Rain loved to tease Gwen about every time they caught the two bird dæmons together in such a position.  Unlike Clint, with his snarky and rude comments, his dæmon would squeak and chirp out some sort of excuse before becoming silent.  However, that was the only time Rain could ever get the falcon close to speechless.  Any other time, Gwen would be chirping away or dive-bombing the other dæmons for amusement.

 

Then there was Thor, sitting across from Natasha on the couch, merrily munching on strawberry flavored Pop-Tarts while simultaneously bellowing out battle cries to encourage the archaic archer of old to defeat thy nemesis.  Or at least, that was what Tony thought the Asgardian was trying to say with his mouth half stuffed full with food.  Rika was lazing about around her human counterpart’s feet like a princess.  Honestly, Tony had been fascination with Thor’s dæmon ever since he first laid eyes on Rika, which wasn’t even deterrent by the fact their first meet with the god had ended with an all-out, no punches pulled fight.  How could Tony, or even Rain for that matter, not be fascinated with Rika when she was an honest to god _dragon_?  Rika, at the moment, was the size of a large tiger, but Tony had seen her grow to the size of a castle or even larger during battle.

 

Tony liked talking to Thor, because, even though Asgardians couldn’t see dæmon, apparently they felt the presences of their spirit guides every now and again.  Rika also liked talking to Tony too.  She was a lot more laid back and calm than Thor and seemed more knowledgeable; however, she liked to point out that Thor was more than he seemed to be.  He was older than all of the Avengers’ put together and was a leader by his own right, yet he was still young by Asgardian standards.  Either way, the god and his dæmon always seemed to make Tony and Rain see life from a different perspective and maybe enjoy life a little more than he had in the past.

 

Then there was Bruce, who sat on the loveseat alone save for his dæmon, Tarika, sitting half on the sofa and have on the floor.  The man was half watching the movie, while the other half of his brain was working on some new scientific discovery and writing it down on a yellow notepad.  Although Tony and Rain liked Bruce and Tarika for their brains and personality, the reason why they had taken to the other pair so fast was because of Tarika’s form.  A North American Black Bear, the same kind of bear Rain had been the day she had saved him from being run over by a car which fit their personalities perfectly. 

 

Like Bruce, Tarika had two sides to her.  She was mostly the calm and gentle bear who would nap constantly while Bruce worked on experiments and would let the other smaller dæmons literally run all over her as they played.   However, all the dæmons knew not to get Tarika mad, because she became the most aggressive and violent of the Avengers’ dæmons when provoked.   She was the perfect dæmon for Bruce and the Hulk, matching him in every way.

 

Lastly, there was Steve Rogers, Captain America, and his aptly named dæmon, Heros, sitting on the floor in front of the large television.  The leader of their mismatch team, loyal to a fault, but willing to protect those they cared about.  It was no wonder the man’s dæmon was a Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf.  They might not have gotten to the best start, what with fighting and the tension of Loki’s imminent invasion, but not all first impressions were correct as Tony knew from experience.  Rogers was willing to admit he had been wrong after the battle and had apologized for his words, which Tony might have apologized for too, in his own roundabout way.  However, there was no one there to prove it other than Rogers (and their dæmons) which he would deny until his dying day.

 

Nonetheless, Rogers slowly started to grow on him and before he knew it Rogers was Steve and _somehow_ acquired access codes to his lab.  The man wasn’t interrupting him in his lab (except when Steve was bothering him to do pesky things like sleep and eat) and more than not, just sat there catching up on current history, asking Tony questions every now and again, or drawing in his sketchpad.  Heros, a male dæmon which had come as a small shock when Tony had found out, usually spent the time sleeping curled around his human partner while he was in the lab.  However, as months pass, the wolf slowly migrated his sleeping position from besides Steve to closer to Tony and Rain, until he was sleeping around Tony’s feet; something which neither Tony nor Rain questioned.

 

Tony was startled out of his musing by a fur brushing up against his hand.  Turning his head, Tony looked into the eyes of his dæmon, a tiny red fox with eyes which had always been the ethereal shine of the arc reactor no matter what shape she took, and frowned.  It hadn’t been Rain to break his musings yet the tingling feeling of touching another’s dæmon wasn’t present as well.   Looking down, Tony was greeted with the familiar more white than black coat with various other lighter color patches of fur of Heros as he brushed up against his leg and hand yet again (out of the corner of his eye, Tony glimpse Steve stiffening slightly as most people did when he inadvertently touched their dæmon before relaxing).

 

Amber eyes looked up to see if he had gotten Tony’s attention this time and when the wolf dæmon saw that he had, his tail started to wagging and there was a small yip.  “You’re missing the movie, Tony.”

 

“How can we miss anything?  This is the _fourth_ time Clint’s made us watch this movie _this_ month,” Rain growled out playfully, not moving from her position on Tony’s shoulder.

 

“It is pack time, you cannot miss pack time,” Heros barked back, yet his tail was still wagging happily.

 

Standing up so she was sitting elegantly on Tony’s shoulder, Rain all but preened.  However, Tony didn’t need to know what was making his dæmon so pleased, because he felt the same thing every time one of his teammates refer to the tower as home or their dæmons say that they were pack, flock, or any variation of the term.

 

“We belong, Rain, we finally belong,” whispered softly so only his dæmon could hear.  Tilting her head to the side, Rain looked out at the rest of the Avengers, down at Heros watching the attentively if not with a little bit of curiosity, and back at her human.

 

“Yeah, Tony, we’re home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thinking about continuing this and making it a series, but not sure.


End file.
